Barack Obama meets students

Yvonne Bojorquez, 16, is one of 27 Village Academy High School students who worked on “Is Anybody Listening?” a class project, which led to a chance encounter with President Obama. 

Dressed in matching decadent black and white attire, the students exited an electric vehicle testing center across from the high school.  There, they met privately with Obama March 19 after hearing his plans for energy conservation, economic recovery and education. 

Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, superintendant of Pomona Unified School District, attended the President’s inauguration in January, distributing “Is Anybody Listening?”, a viral video expressing the personal economic concerns of several VAHS students. PUSD’s public relations division promoted the video, and it became a YouTube sensation with over 40 thousand views. 

Obama referenced the student project in his speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce March 10.  He used Bojorquez’s name four times during the speech, quoting her opening line in “Is Anybody Listening?”

“At first I was very shocked,” Bojorquez said, recalling the president’s reference to her in his speech.  “I kind of felt like I was dreaming and then earlier, like previous to meeting him I was speechless, and now I’m even more speechless because I’ve actually met him.”

She recalled the day she met the president of the United States.

“It felt like I was watching it on television,” Bojorquez said. “It was just really amazing, and meeting him was even crazier because as I was shaking his hand it just felt like time stopped.  It was going very slowly and he was looking into my eyes, so it was kind of intimidating in a way, but it was really cool because I’ve never felt that way, and I totally spaced out and I didn’t even introduce myself.”

The day following the presidential meeting, it was business as usual at VAHS. 

Bojorquez sat quietly at her desk; an orange and white Casper the Friendly Ghost button adorned her purple sweater, which matched the purple streak in her short, black hair.  She wore tattered Converse tennis shoes inked with a cobweb design and thick, black glasses.

It was a Friday at 3 p.m., but she stayed an hour after dismissal taking a Math 71 test.  Bojorquez, like 175 of her high school peers, is enrolled in Mt. SAC courses offered at VAHS through a dual-admissions program.  She plans on studying journalism or medicine after high school and is currently taking eight classes.

“It’s pretty normal for me now, but before it was kind of weird,” she said.  “It was kind of hard because you’d have to come to regular school and then you’d have to stay for like two or three hours spending the whole week for extra classes.” 

Bojorquez, whose mother works as a letter carrier and whose father works as a lead custodian, said that her parents held secure employment, but that she has witnessed the hardships of others near her.

“My aunt she lives in Las Vegas and her husband works in construction, but he’s been out of work for like four weeks now, and they’re pretty much struggling,” Bojorquez said. “My neighbor across the street, her husband works in construction as well, and they struggle paying. She’s the only one supporting the family.”

Bojorquez said the message she wanted to convey in “Is Anybody Listening?” is that the current state of the economy was not the result of one single person.

“We’re all basically responsible for it,” Bojorquez said.  “So I just want people to realize that they’re not alone, that there’s other people that can help them, that it’s not just one person’s fault. It’s everybody’s fault.  We just have to come together and figure out ways to help each other to get through this, just to basically survive.”

Bojorquez said meeting Obama has brought her hope that hard work will get her where she wants to be in life.

“I kind of now feel like nothing’s really impossible, like we all reached the president, and from previous presidents you kind of got that vibe that you can’t really talk to someone like that, but with President Obama, I just feel like nothing’s really impossible,” she said. “I mean he is the first half- black president and he is someone who you can actually contact and talk to.”

-Wendy Rubick

The Mountaineer print edition

Volume 71, Issue 2